Many network systems are currently in use in commercial and home environments. For example, computer networks such as the Internet are well known and widely used. The Internet uses the TCP/IP protocol, which requires a significant amount of circuitry and computing power to provide good performance. Of course, such circuitry is relatively costly. On the other hand, some networking applications do not require the high performance of the TCP/IP protocol. One such application is an intelligent home system.
An intelligent home control system requires communication between intelligent household devices in the home system. One approach to implement the communication in an intelligent home control system is to connect devices to a shared medium. However, existing systems tend to provide low performance, support a relatively small number of devices, and require the user to configure devices in forming the network. Further, some conventional systems only support one-way communication from a controller to the devices. Thus, a system for organizing easily configured devices into networks and supporting communication between the networked devices is needed. Further, because the devices can be inexpensive household appliances and the like, it is desirable that the device circuitry to support this system should be inexpensive and small.